Aspects of the present invention are directed generally to an apparatus and method for conducting a competition. More particularly, aspects of the present invention relates to an interactive competition wherein a player competes against a celebrity.
Consumers in the modern culture have a general fascination with public figures or celebrities. Celebrity can be related to professional and amateur sports, entertainment, business, media, or politics to name a few areas. In this modem culture, celebrity gossip and news programs are promoted to the public in print media, radio media, television media and on-line media. In the past years, game shows have been produced for television programs in which a celebrity plays for a charity or some other organization. In many television game shows, the celebrity is asked to answer garden-variety trivia related to general subject matter. While providing an entertainment outlet for a fan to watch the celebrity play such a game show, the fan has no interaction with the celebrity. Eventually, the fan may lose interest in the show by just merely watching a static game show with no interaction.
Numerous consumers use the computer networks, for many purposes including to purchase products online, locate special events, read news stories, pay bills and play games. Online gaming is also provided over computer networks, such as the World Wide Web. Gaming web sites provide players with numerous types of computer games. In the online environment, entertainment web sites that focus and celebrity news and gossip are popular in terms of use. Some of these web sites are have subjects about celebrities, shows, or movies. In these sites and others, a devotee of the subject might be invited to take a quiz about that subject. While these sites might test the devotee""s knowledge, the quizzes do not provide the experience of playing against a celebrity about the questions. Moreover, the sites with such quizzes, do not provide interactive gaming against the celebrity either in-person or in a virtual environment.
The present invention provides an entertaining an interactive competition wherein a player competes against a celebrity.
Aspects of the invention provide a method and a system of conducting a competition in which a player can compete against a celebrity in a head-to-head trivia game. In one aspect, the subject matter of quiz questions is associated with the celebrity rather than unrelated sources or general trivia. In another aspect, a player competes against a celebrity in a number of question formats including a multiple-choice quiz question environment. In another aspects, the celebrity may participate against the player via prerecorded media to form an asymmetrical competition. In one aspect, the celebrity may participate against the player in a real-time format. In yet another aspect, the competition provides an entertaining enjoyable environment for a player to compete against a celebrity. In another aspect, an aim of the competition includes the player to outscore or outperform an opponent, such as the celebrity, by obtaining more points at the end of the competition. Another aim of the competition is for the player to answer more questions correctly than a celebrity thereby to win a prize. In these aspects, a player can have a fun experience of playing against a celebrity in an interactive gaming environment.
In other aspects of the invention, the competition can be provided in many different environments, for example, including but not limited to a computing environment including an online environment, a web-based environment, or general computing environment; a television environment in a game show format; a radio environment in a radio talk show format; or a wireless communications environment in a cellular phone game format.
In other aspects of the invention a computer readable medium includes a game host component that presents prerecorded media data which has quiz questions with trivia information associated with a celebrity. A celebrity component provides preselected answers to the quiz questions. A user interface receives a player an answer to the quiz questions answered by the celebrity component. The scores of a player and the celebrity component are tracked and updated based on the answers to the quiz questions.
The above and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent and fully understood from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, taken in connection with the appended drawings.